About Our School

Haverim Beyahad is the Education Program of Congregation Bet Haverim, a Reconstructionist synagogue founded by lesbians and gay men and embracing all Jews and their loved ones.  Congregation Bet Haverim begins with the assumption that all members, young and old, are still learning. We welcome and invite each person in our community to join us.

Our educational program strives to foster a greater sense of connection to Jewish community and tradition, to develop our sense of awe and wonderment, and to promote value-based living. We strive to make Jewish teachings accessible to our students, allowing them to relate what they learn in class to their own lives in meaningful ways, whether to pause and appreciate the sense of awe that comes during a walk in the woods, to feel connected to generations of Jews through ritual, or to consider how different Jewish thinkers would encourage them to behave in any given situation – and to feel empowered to agree or disagree with those teachings based on their own systems of values. In addition to considering our own daily lives, we strive to be more mindful, as a community, of the world beyond our own daily social existences by participating in acts of Tikkun Olam, the healing of the world, in our broader community. 

We are committed to learning that is intergenerational, with adults studying alongside children in the school, joining together at community celebrations and building an environment in the home that fosters ongoing Jewish learning. We understand Jewish education as a life-long pursuit that takes place in the classroom, in the home, in the synagogue, and in the community at-large.

We are committed to pluralism in our education program and in our daily lives, and our school actively celebrates the richness of our differences. We welcome families who practice and experience Judaism in a variety of ways: our families are interfaith and multi-racial, Hebrew-speaking and Hebrew-learning, ritual mavens and ritual learners, skeptics and spiritualists. Our children have single parents, gay parents, and straight parents, who come from many different religious, social, and cultural backgrounds. We are brought together by a love of Judaism, a desire to be both loved and challenged by our community, and an interest in identifying and living out our values. We strive to live lives that embrace the Torah’s teaching that we are all made in God’s image – to be so genuinely inclusive that we’ve forgotten we’re being inclusive, to offer a welcome that is so welcome that it’s not an effort, it’s just who we are.